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Darwin Correspondence Project

To J. D. Hooker   [10 December 1845]1

Down Bromley Kent

Wednesday

My dear Hooker

I have nothing particular to say, but the spirit moves me to write to you to say how much I enjoyed your visit & all our raging discussions.— I somehow feel that I had no talk with you individually & this I much regret, as I wanted to hear about your future plans & to talk over many things: you really must pay us a Sunday visit early in the Spring & you shall come as late as you like on Saturday.— I have finished all the numbers, of the A. F. with undiminished pleasure.2 I suspect p. 241 (4 lines from bottom) there is false print of S. “Australis” for pinnatifida???—3 I have been pleased to observe how many species my Fuegian collection contains: I think you ought somewhere to explain where C. Negro & Elizabeth islands are, as few would be able to find out without the best charts.

I presume you can trust Capt. Kings localities; I ask, because in his zoological collection, the localities have been infamously mingled; African species marked St of Magellan!

After you were gone, Wedgwood4 was suggesting, that you might not unlikely get a collection made on summit of Fernando Po, through Jameson,5 the great African merchants. They are so liberal, that it really does not seem improbable, if the importance of the object were explained to them that they wd request some surgeon or other person to make the attempt. I want to know, whether any insects were collected on Kerguelen’s Land: if so how interesting it wd be to compare them with those from Fuegia: Waterhouse wd. be the man for the comparison. Are there any land-birds there?— By the way can you inform me, how many numbers of the Antarctic Zoology have come out;6 as Gray, in his own & Richardson’s name was so magnificent as to present me with the few first numbers.

How I should like such another reunion, as we had the other Sunday; for my own part, I learn more in those discussions than in ten times over the number of hours readings.

Ever my dear Hooker | Yours truly | C. Darwin

Footnotes

The first Wednesday after J. D. Hooker’s visit to Down on 6 December 1845.
CD was correct. The error is rectified in the corrigenda to J. D. Hooker 1844–7 (p. 548). The page referred to was in the thirteenth number of Hooker’s work, which appeared sometime before 4 December 1845 (Wiltshear 1913).
Robert Jamieson, a London merchant instrumental in opening up parts of Africa through his shipping concerns.
Richardson and Gray 1844–75, in which the zoological results of James Clark Ross’s Antarctic expedition were described.

Bibliography

Hooker, Joseph Dalton. 1844–7. Flora Antarctica. 1 vol. and 1 vol. of plates. Pt 1 of The botany of the Antarctic voyage of HM discovery ships Erebus and Terror in the years 1839–1843, under the command of Captain Sir James Clark Ross. London: Reeve Brothers.

Wiltshear, F. G. 1913. The botany of the Antarctic voyage. Journal of Botany: British and Foreign 51: 355–8. [Vols. 6,7,8]

Summary

CD’s enjoyment of JDH’s visit and "all our raging discussions".

Would like to compare insects from Kerguelen Islands with those from Tierra del Fuego.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-935
From
Charles Robert Darwin
To
Joseph Dalton Hooker
Sent from
Down
Source of text
DAR 114: 50
Physical description
ALS 6pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 935,” accessed on 19 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-935.xml

Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 3

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